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Piper Perabo Interview: First Snow by Sheila Roberts Movies Online recently sat down with actor Piper Perabo to talk about her new film, "First Snow” in which she stars opposite Guy Pearce. The taut psychological thriller, shot on location in New Mexico, is directed by Mark Fergus in his feature debut from a screenplay he co-wrote with Hawk Ostby. Pearce plays the wound tight and cocky Jimmy Starks, a smooth-talking salesman certain he’s on the verge of a big break. Even when his car stalls in the middle of nowhere, a roadside soothsayer (J.K. Simmons) assures him a windfall is on its way. But although Jimmy should be happy when his boss suddenly agrees to financially back his business venture, he starts to become paranoid instead. As his girlfriend Deirdre (Piper Perabo) and his best friend/business partner Ed (William Fichtner) watch him slowly come unwound, Jimmy wonders if a past betrayal of his friend, newly paroled Vince (Shea Whigham), could be catching up to him. And, as the weather turns cold, Jimmy can’t help but fear the mysterious seer’s other prediction…that they’ll be no tomorrow after the first snow. Piper Perabo has been working non-stop since her big-screen splash in Jerry Bruckheimer’s "Coyote Ugly.” She was recently seen in Adam Shankman’s "Cheaper by the Dozen 2” in which she reprised her role as the eldest daughter to Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt along with the romantic comedy "Imagine Me & You” with Lena Heady and Matthew Goode. In 2006, Piper starred in the crime drama "10th & Wolf” with an ensemble cast that included James Marsden and Dennis Hopper. She also appeared in Christopher Nolan’s "The Prestige” with Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Scarlett Johansson. Currently, she can be seen in "Because I Said So” with Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore and Lauren Graham. Perabo will appear next in the Pastor Brothers’ "Carriers,” a post apocalyptic thriller shot in New Mexico about four friends trying to escape a viral pandemic. The film also stars Chris Pine and Lou Taylor Pucci. Perabo will also be seen in the upcoming drama, "Ashes,” directed by Ajai Naidu. Both films are set to release in 2007. Her feature film debut was in the comedy "White Boyz,” written by Danny Hoch. She also starred in the comedy caper "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle” opposite Robert De Niro and Renee Russo, "George and the Dragon” with Michael Clark Duncan and James Purefoy, the cult favorite "Lost and Delirious,” directed by Lea Pool, "Edison” with Justin Timberlake, Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman, and the sci-fi thriller "The Cave,” opposite Cole Hauser, Morris Chestnut and Lena Headey. Piper Perabo is a fabulous person and we really appreciated her time. Here’s what she had to tell us about her new film, what it was like working with Guy Pearce, and the excitement of shooting with real snow: Q: We missed you for Because I Said So, The Cave, 10th and Wolf, Imagine Me and You... PIPER: Oh my God. Well, The Cave and 10th and Wolf, that was...I shot seven movies that year. And so I was sort of, not all of a sudden...you know, a little busy. It was insane. It was an insane year. Q: When did you film all these movies that are suddenly coming out now? PIPER: Yeah. Well, this movie, First Snow, we wrapped two years to the day, tomorrow. So yeah, it's been a while. And it was funny, when I knew I was coming out here, I sat down and watched the film again. Q: You were saying you were working on this for two years... PIPER: It's been two years since we wrapped this film. So I had another look at the film again, and it's funny...You know, distance, like with a little time, how you can see a project so differently. Q: How did your perception change? PIPER: I didn't realize how...Well, this is sort of mundane, but it was shocking to me anyway, when I saw it projected the other night, I had never seen it projected before. And New Mexico is so integral as a character in the film, and I wasn't really realizing the kind of influence that that had on me when I was making the movie, that it's sort of lonely and beautiful and crossroads and desolate. And there's all these kind of things that are there, present, especially when you see it projected, that really are themes in the films. I mean, I know that's usually what you're trying to do, but it doesn't really ever hit me like that. Q: It comes across in your character. PIPER: Yeah, I was really influenced by it. And I could sort of see that as I was watching it...You know, how strong it was. Q: How different is this character from those you've played before? PIPER: It's pretty different. I may have said this to you, but when you're playing a supporting female role, a lot of times you're literally a supportive character. You know, you're always like, ‘I believe in you!’ and ‘We're going to fight this!’ or ‘We're going to win this!’ Or you know, whatever. [laughs] Or you're falling for the lead guy. You think he's the greatest thing in the world and all his ideas make sense. I've played those women before. And this character, because she's kind of on her way out, and she thinks maybe enough is enough with this guy, I thought that was such an interesting place to start from. I've certainly never played a character before who's got one foot out the door and ready to leave this guy, and it's a fun, fun place to start from. Q: Why does she have one foot out the door? PIPER: Because I think he won't let her into his life. I'm sure when she met him, it was all very like, ‘He's a salesman, and he's cool, and his hair's cool, and he's proud and cocky and thinks he's important.’ That can sort of be attractive when you first meet somebody. But then when you're with them and kind of living at their house, and they're still like, ‘Hey, babe, blah blah blah...’ In the kitchen? You know what I mean? When it's just you, it's not some bar at midnight? Eventually it starts to feel like a wall that I think she can't get through. And she's kind of like, ‘You know what? If you're going to lock me out, forget it.’ Q: Did you and Guy talk about your characters and work that out? PIPER: Yeah. It started right away actually, talking about that idea. Originally in the script, I was living in the house. I lived there with him. But when I got there, Mark Fergus was like, ‘No, no, no, you don't live here,’ and it totally cemented for me that she's on her way out. When I walked into the house, and it's ‘all his stuff,’ you know what I mean? It's like a guy's house with like a leather chair. There's not even a couch so you can sit together. Like somebody's on the floor and somebody's in the chair. And it's like, guitars and old records and a painting of a horse, and blah. There's nothing of her. It's like what she drinks isn't even in the bar. All her stuff's in a gym bag. It's so clear when you walk into that house for the first time, and we talked about that a lot. I don't even hang my stuff up in the closet, you know what I mean? Q: What's your take on the whole paranormal, fortune telling thing? What would be your reaction if someone did to you what they do to Guy's character? PIPER: I would probably freak out. Mark, the director, was saying once that Hawk, who's his writing partner, early on in his life, someone told Hawk that he had a short lifeline. He had his palm read when he was really young, and the person said, ‘You have a really short lifeline.’ [laughs] Hawk has never been able to let that go, and I can totally understand that! You know, it's weird how things said to you at a certain right moment, or somebody tells you something about yourself...It's just weird for people to tell you about yourself. And when they do, and it's that right moment and it kind of clicks with you, you can't get it out of your teeth, you know what I mean? It's right there. I think I would obsess about it, so I don't go to those people because I wouldn't be able to let it go. Q: Well, I don't think they're supposed to tell you bad news. PIPER: Well, I don't know if they are. I don't know what their ethics are. I think if you're kind of like a bullshitter or whatever...like he goes to that second psychic who's obviously a hoax, and it's a money thing and...I'm sure those people don't tell you bad news. But if there are people who can see that stuff, I wonder what their ethical rules are for that kind of thing? It'd be sort of interesting. And they certainly don't have a union. Q: If you knew you were about to die, what would you do differently? PIPER: I don't really think I would change anything. Like I would hope that... [laughs] He has these scenes at the end where he gives people the money he owes them, or is nice to the guy at the bar, without saying, "I'm going to go, I'll see you later." You know, not making it all about himself, sort of straightening some things up, which I think is very admirable. If you ask someone that question and they're like, ‘Oh, I would go to Fiji’ or ‘I would tell my wife I loved her’ or whatever...You kind of might want to go do that right now. I think if you can answer that question and there are things that you answer with, you might want to go do them. I don't know what else you're spending your time doing. You know what I mean? Q: What about the idea of what you do in the past affecting your present? PIPER: I think if you want to leave things behind, truly leave something behind, you need to take care of it a little. But I don't think you can just push it in a corner and think it's going to go away. I think it just sits there in the corner looking at you every time you walk into the room. And so I think you have to pick that stuff up and fold it up and put it in a drawer where it belongs. I think you have to deal with your past if you want to leave it behind at all. I think it's possible to leave it behind, but you can't just ignore it. Q: Do you believe in a pre-ordained destiny, or that everybody makes their own future? PIPER: I think you make your own future. It's not really the message of the film, but that's what I think. I don't know about saying the future, but I think you're certainly the master of what happens to you. Q: Ever had a brush with the supernatural? PIPER: Ummm...Yeah, although not in the sense of this film. I had a friend once who had a house that he had just moved into, and I went and sat down outside, and I fell asleep. I had been shooting. It was here in the hills. And I sat down in this long pool chair. It was kind of a crappy old chair that had been left there by the last people. I was so tired, and we had been on night shoots, and I just fell asleep. And he came out of the house and sat down at the foot of the chair, and I felt it...he's a big guy. I thought he didn't say anything because he thought I was sleeping. I was like, "Are you going to make some food or something?" And there wasn't anybody there. He stuck his head out of the door a minute later, and he was like, ‘You want to come in?’ I said, ‘Richie, I thought...’ and I told him what happened, and he said, ‘Oh, the reason why the house was for sale is there was a man who lived here who just died.’ And it so gave me...It still, like when I remember it, it gives me the kind of...It didn't feel bad. I was just sure he sat down next to me. It was weird. Q: It's like the energy's still there. PIPER: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It didn't feel bad, but it was certainly strange. Q: Do you live here in LA? PIPER: No, no. I live in New York. I live in New York City. Yeah. I mean, I like it here. It's real sunny, and [there’s] great concerts. Q: How did the shoot go, and how did New Mexico's environment fit in? PIPER: We shot the movie in 29 days so you're outside a lot and participating in the cold, barren landscape. One way that New Mexico was participatory in the film was it snowed once. I think you can tell by the shots that it's not CGI, and that really is snow. And when I got to New Mexico and realized they didn't know if it was going to snow this year, and they sort of panicked and began accumulating bags and bags of fake snow -- like white corn flakes and fans and blankets and all this sh*t. I thought, ‘This is going to look like crap! What are we doing? We're making a movie about snow and it...What? Like it doesn't snow here! Oh my God, what the f*ck are we doing!’ It sort of made me panic. [laughs] Especially when you see fake...I mean, I don't know if you've ever been on a movie where they're doing fake snow, but it's horrible and it doesn't melt and it smells like...It's horrible. It's horrible. Q: And you can't breathe it. PIPER: No, no! And it sticks in your hair and it doesn't melt like snow, and the movie's called First Snow! You know, I panicked. And then one night, we were shooting in the house and we were wrapping, and it started snowing. And they said, ‘You know, we're going to get a good 6 to 8 inches tonight.’ And it was so exciting. And really, you could see...I mean, Mark Fergus and Hawk, who wrote and directed the picture, the excitement and the sort of relief and the blessing that this snowfall was really. All of a sudden, it was this kind of energy like, ‘We're going to need three more cameras!’ and ‘We're scrapping all the work tomorrow and we're going to do all the exteriors!’ Q: Did you have to change the production plans? PIPER: Completely. And just in the night, you know, we were pulling more cars and extra cameras and all this stuff so we could get all this stuff while it was fresh because to see Guy walk through fresh snow in a movie like this, and to see it falling, and to see space is getting covered by snow...It's everything for the feeling of the picture. And to feel it hit and the excitement of it happening, you know, as you start rehearsing all these scenes that happen in the snow, it was just amazing and so exciting. He needs to stop writing weather movies, because it's really not... [laughs] You can't really count on it. But it was great. Q: What was Mark like to work with as a director? Did he give you a lot of latitude? PIPER: What was written is very much what the movie looks like. Even shot for shot, there’s a lot of things that came in exactly as what he wrote. When it’s well written, you don’t need as much latitude. It’s the scripts that aren’t very good where you need to be able to – that sort of speaks ill of improv – but improv is necessary in scripts that aren’t really good because you’re trying to get around certain flaws and things like that. But when the script is really good, you don’t need as much latitude because you want to do what’s there. But I think what was useful with Mark is that because he’s the writer and Hawk was there too, they have a lot of secret information about things. They know what’s in your character’s purse and they know where you live and they know who your friends are and if you graduated from high school. They know all this stuff because it was rattling around when they were writing it and they’ve been discussing it for a year. So you can always, when you get a prop like a purse and it’s empty, and the prop guys don’t do that – it would be cool if they did – but you can go to Mark and Hawk and say, ‘What’s in my bag?’ And they go, ‘Well there’s this and there’s smokes and this and that and a dry cleaning ticket.’ In that way, it’s really fun to work with Mark because he kind of knows what’s in the drawers in the kitchen. It’s cool. Q: I know most of your scenes were more with Guy, but what did you think of the casting of J.K. Simmons for the role of the fortune teller because it seems like such a departure from what you normally see in that type of character? PIPER: I think it’s so ingenuous. First of all because I think he’s a great actor, but also I think there’s a certain corniness and I think you can see this when he cast the fortune teller who’s not real -- like you have to be ethnic and from Eastern Europe or American Indian or you could really go with this cornball idea of ‘people who know more than us.’ But I love that it’s like a big white guy who could probably beat the crap out of Guy. You know what I mean? He has nothing to be afraid of. He has this sort of sadness about his gift for prophecy, this sort of Cassandra complex, and I think it’s a really interesting casting choice. And also because the way that J.K. plays it with Guy, Guy can’t really fight what he’s saying but he also can’t really fight him. I mean when J.K. says, ‘G’day,’ you can’t sort of grab this guy and throw him around. He is actually a force of a person and so I think it’s really interesting, instead of a Rumanian woman in a turban who you could knock around and drag her under your car with you, you can’t really f*ck with this guy and I think that sort of makes the message much more powerful. I think that’s really cool. Q: What is Guy like to work with? PIPER: He’s good. I was afraid he was going to be crazy because the characters he makes are so intense and make such strange decisions. They’re so specific and he’s such a chameleon. From one thing to the next he’s very changeable, and those actors can sometimes be sort of crazy which can be a little difficult for me to work with crazy. I mean I can do it, but I’d rather not. And I was worried that he was going to be crazy but I really like his work, so I feel like ‘okay, well if he’s crazy, I’ll figure it out.’ But he was really easy to work with. He was really generous. He likes to talk a lot about what he’s thinking about even in these sort of nuances or angles he’s coming at in a scene or even a line and that sort of let’s you into his head space so that you can participate with him and to me, that’s really useful. Q: Was there a particular role of his that you found particularly intense? PIPER: Well the first time I had ever seen him was in ‘Memento.’ Don’t ask me how I missed ‘L.A. Confidential’ but I hadn’t seen it. That movie was unforgettable. I worked with Christopher Nolan, the director, last year and it’s for the same reason that that movie was so beautiful and interesting and hardcore and they were just like ‘This is what we want to tell, and f*ck it if you don’t like these characters, and f*ck it if you don’t think it’s pretty enough. American films can be very sort of rosy and actually the lighting is sort of yellow and pinkish and this movie was kind of blue and German and angular, and I thought it was so unabashedly unapologetic about ‘we want to make this film this way’ and so successful at it that I was sort of obsessed with Guy from that point on. And the tattoos and the sort of weird body and the cheekbones and it’s also like ‘who the f*ck is that guy?’ He’s sort of handsome, but sort of monstrous and it’s so interesting that role. And then you see him in ‘L.A. Confidential’ and he’s not at all that. Like Cate Blanchett, you can’t … it’s so hard to see how that person is also that person. I love movies like that where you’re like ‘who’s playing so and so?’ and you know them. Q: What have you seen lately that you like? PIPER: Recently? Have you seen ‘The Host’? I loved ‘The Host,’ this new Korean film. I thought that was just like a good, old fashioned monster movie. Maybe it was a little heady for a monster movie. It’s not exactly Godzilla but I thought it was the perfect use of CGI and I loved the small group of characters against the backdrop of a city and I loved the way it was shot and I thought it was great. I saw ‘Stranger than Fiction’ recently and I thought that was kind of great too. I don’t know why it didn’t get more attention. It’s so beautiful and fun and literary. Emma Thompson is so good. Did you see that? It’s marvelous when he calls her on the phone. I mean who can do that? Why isn’t she getting awards? I don’t understand. She’s such a genius. Q: I think she has some already. PIPER: Yeah, but I think she should have gotten nominated for that stuff. It’s unbelievable. Q: Can you see your own monster movie, ‘The Cave,’ in the same light as you could watch ‘The Host’? PIPER: No, I don’t think it’s quite nearly as good. I think it’s really hard to make a really specific genre film and I think it takes a weird, uncompromising mind to believe that like ‘I want to make a monster movie.’ And also the people in ‘The Host,’ you’ve never seen them before. The leading man is weirdly unattractive and not even that sympathetic and you sort of love him anyway and I think they make these offbeat choices that really make you fall for the characters; whereas in ‘The Cave,’ we all have muscles and really nice hair. It’s kind of strange. Q: What do you have coming up next? PIPER: Next I have this movie coming out called ‘Carriers’ which I also shot in New Mexico. We didn’t shoot them back to back but they’re coming out that way. It’s an apocalyptic thriller which I’m really excited about with Lou Taylor Pucci who I’m also…. I keep getting lucky in getting to work with these guys that I love and I think it’s going to be really good. We’re still in post but I saw some of it and it was really good. I’m excited. Q: It’s a thriller about four friends, right? PIPER: It’s about four friends. A pandemic breaks out -- and this is why I like post too – but a pandemic breaks out in the United States and these two brothers and their girlfriends steal a car and kind of try and outrun it. It’s cool. Q: It’s probably more about the relationships rather than the pandemic itself? PIPER: Yeah, it’s really about the relationships because they’re trying to get to the middle of nowhere where there won’t be disease, so in some ways it’s like a plague because it’s these four innocents in a car. There’s no law anymore. There’s no government control of anything. It’s cool. Q: Can you tell us about ‘Ashes’ which is also coming up? PIPER: I should talk about that. ‘Ashes’ is Ajay Naidu who’s an activist. It’s his directorial debut and he’s a friend of mine and he’s a genius. He’s in ‘Office Space’ and he’s in all these sort of amazing films. This movie is semi-biographical about when he and his brother first moved to Manhattan and the whole Bhangra hip hop scene was coming off in New York – all these sort of Punjabi DJ’s mixing in all this stuff and the kind of dance craze that sort of started within that. It’s f*cking fun! It’s really cool and the dancing is… I’m so excited they’re making musicals. I mean it’s not a musical, it’s a drama, but I like musicals and I think it sort of speaks to that. Q: Thank you so much. PIPER: Thanks a lot. "First Snow” opens in theaters on March 25th. source: moviesonline.ca